IT'S NOT ALL BLACK AND WHITE

If a government agency were to solve the problems for which it was created there would no longer be a need for that agency. Common sense tells us that it is not in their best interest to eliminate their own jobs. Funding is required to perpetuate the need, and additional funding is required as the need expands. Expansion is the product and the goal of bureaucracy. This logic can be applied to all manner of situations and conditions which exist in our society.

A need is found or created, defined, and then carefully cultivated until it assumes jungle-like characteristics. A tenacious growth which can be temporarily restrained on occasion, but which will always evade our control and continue to grow. We, the citizenry, are seemingly incapable of taking charge and killing off the growth, and find ourselves continuing to feed the monster on the assumption that one day we will find the solution to the problem.

There are some very bad people in America today who, using the same tactics, manipulate us into thinking that ethnic differences are evil. They are not interested in solving problems. They are not interested in us at all. They simply realized that in America power and financial gain are there for the taking because we are a decent, law-abiding country of fair-minded people. They know that they can lie and cheat and disseminate evil propaganda to divide and conquer ethnically diverse groups who react with their hearts and not their minds.

While there are many elements of ethnic polarity which contribute to ill-will among the population and exacerbate matters of local, regional and national disagreement; by far the most volatile and deep-seated animosity exists between blacks and whites and we must ask ourselves why?

A slave who became the first legitimate black leader in America; a man highly respected by all, once said “…there is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.” So said Booker T. Washington. He warned against what he called “problem profiteers” among the black community.

Black Americans take heed. Your enemies are not white people per se. There is good and bad in mankind, and therefore, good and bad in both races. Bad people don’t solve problems - they are the problem. Your enemies are mostly within your own race. You have good, decent, upright community leaders among you and many of them you cannot name. Your national leaders are self-proclaimed. You follow them because you hear them every day and believe their messages of hatred and division. They are the most vociferous and the most visible. Freedom of speech, one of our most cherished rights, allows them to spew their vitriol with impunity.

In many neighborhoods people of ethnic variety reside side by side. They support each other and their families, and practice real citizenship in community matters and are dismayed by the ceaseless racial rhetoric. Their children attend school together, are in the same choral societies, school plays and sports teams. They have slumber parties at each others homes, laugh at the same jokes, pray in the same churches. Truly…”one nation under God…” Contrast that with our public perception of race relationships as delineated by television talk shows, newspaper opinion columns and racists.

There are haters among us. You know, for the most part, who they are and yes, they are black and white. They are losers in life. Hiding behind the pseudo-religious and political organizations they create to mask their real purpose in life - to divide and conquer. They wield words as cudgels to drive good people to their knees. They construct and inflate slights where they don’t exist, just as false witnesses condemn those unjustly accused in the courts. They are pathetic and they are easily defeated if we respect each other. Without a gullible audience they are nothing.

Among the black community, these haters tell you their only purpose in life is a quest for social justice. In reality, they couldn’t care less about their “brethren.” They do not want your problems to disappear, on the contrary, they want them to grow and fester because without your anger and racial animosity, they would not continue to amass the fortunes they covet, or live the lifestyles they do. You, in the black community who believe them and follow them are their product. They must have you hating the white community for all manner of imagined injustices or their business dries up.

Martin Luther King said “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” Yet many who profess to be his disciples and constantly invoke his wisdom and compassion, ignore his teachings in their daily lives. Those who are sincere in their desire for unification must make it happen. Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk did.

The first step in correcting our misguided attitudes is to never again refer to race when addressing an American issue. Keep your individuality…but be an American first. Martin Luther King also said “…that we should judge each other by our character,” but we are being exhorted by contemporary black leaders to “…judge each other by the color of our skin.”

Our communities need non-political leaders with a burning desire to rededicate America to the principles upon which it was founded. That is the only cause we should all espouse. None of us are perfect, but some are endowed with more understanding and vision than others. Abraham Lincoln was one such when he uttered these indelible words. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

- WILL